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I once compared Gascogne white wines to Marks & Spencer’s white cotton pants. Absolutely everything you could want in a white wine. Not sexy, not particularly interesting, but a good reliable standard that holds no surprises. For the most part, the wines we tasted were clean, fresh and suitable for a weekday. Perhaps not something you’d want if you were entertaining and certainly not suitable if you were trying to impress someone, but comfortable and plain.
Our favourite wine was in fact a Vin du Pays du Comte Tolosan, which is a larger region, covering south west France. This 2005 Colombard/Sauvignon from Thresher is £5.99 normally, but £3.99 if you buy it on 3 for 2. None of the wines had particularly strong smells – this one was light and fresh and perfectly pleasant – but in the mouth it was really very good. Bone dry, with fresh acidity and a degree of texture that we hadn’t found on others. A great wine to have in the fridge door during the week, ready for when you need it. However, if you don’t finish it in one sitting, I think you ought to use some sort of vacuum to take the air out of the bottle because wines like this need to be drunk quickly, or they start to taste stale.
Majestic’s Marc Ducournau Gascogne 2005 is £4.49 and had a disappointing smell, spoilt by some extra sulphur, which smelt like cardboard. Once again, though, the taste was very good. You couldn’t fault it – a perfectly made dry white wine with a lemon and grapefruit taste on the finish.
Third best was Colombelle 2005, which is £4.79 from Oddbins. It had an interesting smell, with granny smith apple and some cat. The taste was pure granny smith. Incidentally, Oddbins are stopping offering price promotions on single bottles of wine but are now offering a 20% discount on 6 bottles of all wines that are exclusive and nationally available.
Sainsbury’s own label, non vintage Gascogne wine is only £2.99, which is a good price for this wine which doesn’t smell particularly good, but has a reasonable taste. It’s bone dry and fresh, but light in texture.
Marks & Spencer’s, at £4.29, smelt of wet wool or wet dog but was a pretty good dry white wine in the mouth. JP Chenet has impressed me in the past, but their Colombard/Chardonnay, which is about £3.99, but is £3.75 in Morrisons was pretty grim. It smelt of sulphur initially, but this lifted to give absolutely nothing! It tasted tangily of grapefruit, which some of the panel found just too acidic.
Domaine de Planterieu, which is £4.29 from Waitrose, has been a good little wine for years, but this bottle smelt cheaply of pineapple and tasted of unsweetened grapefruit juice. The Co-op’s own label Gascogne, which is £3.25, was dreadful. I couldn’t tie its problems down to a known fault, but we all thought it was off. The taste was highly acidic, reminding Lorraine of pickled onions and making several members of the panel pull faces.
Vin du Pays du Comte Tolosan,Colombard/Sauvignon 2005 - Thresher - £5.99/£3.99 on 3 for 2
Marc Ducournau Gascogne 2005 - Majestic -£4.49
Colombelle 2005 - Oddbins - £4.79